Meet the megadonors pumping $3.5 billion into the US midterms

At the end of a campaign, the cash really starts flowing.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have flooded the political system since August, when The New York Times last ranked the top 20 donors in the midterms. Our new ranking, analysing contributions made through the most recent filing deadline in mid-October, shows that the updated top 20 have pumped roughly US$2 billion (NZ$3.5b) into federal races this cycle.

These megadonors are playing an outsize role in the most expensive midterm election, as measured in political advertising, since at least the 2018 cycle, according to data from AdImpact, a media tracking firm. Their $2b will fund a range of campaign operations, but to put the amount into perspective, it’s equivalent to roughly 15% of all the money that will be spent on ads this cycle, according to AdImpact.

Three new megadonors, all Democrats, cracked the updated list. But as was true this summer, there is a strong Republican- and tech-oriented tilt to the biggest spenders.

The political headwinds facing the Republican Party, including the unpopular war with Iran and high consumer prices, have only intensified in recent months. So the party is to some extent hoping its advantage with tech billionaires and other Republican mega-contributors will help blunt those challenges.

Some of these top 20 donors are grouped together because of close familial or business relationships. Here is the Times list:

REPUBLICAN

The world’s richest man has spent an extraordinary amount to try to elect Ken Paxton to the Senate in Texas. That includes building a field campaign that the Republican Party is depending upon to turn out its voters.

Largest recipients:

Note: This figure includes donations from United States of America Inc, a nonprofit group controlled by Musk. The figure here does not include some giving that occurred this cycle, but was designated for the 2024 election.

REPUBLICAN

These husband-and-wife Midwestern industrialists are longtime Republican donors who have a particular interest in politics in Wisconsin and Illinois.

Largest recipients:

REPUBLICAN

This is the nonprofit arm of the Senate Leadership Fund, the flagship super PAC for Republican Senate candidates. The group has aired about $162m worth of pro-Republican policy ads in the midterms.

Largest recipients:

REPUBLICAN

The founders of the Silicon Valley firm Andreessen Horowitz, along with the firm itself, are aiming to shape regulations on cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence.

Largest recipients:

Note: This figure includes donations directly from Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm owned by Andreessen and Horowitz. It also includes donations from their wives, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen and Felicia Horowitz.

REPUBLICAN

The hedge fund investor is a longtime Republican donor driven primarily by his school-choice agenda. But he has also pushed for lower taxes and to shape regulations of TikTok, one of his firm’s investments.

Largest recipients:

DEMOCRAT

This is the nonprofit arm of Senate Majority PAC, the flagship super PAC for Democratic Senate candidates. The group has aired about $35m worth of pro-Democratic policy ads in the midterms.

Largest recipients:

DEMOCRAT

The father-and-son pair are still the biggest fish in the Democratic money world, using their super PACs to back left-leaning groups.

Largest recipients:

Note: This figure includes donations from Geosor and the Fund for Policy Reform, groups controlled by the Soros family. Not all of the money donated this cycle to the family’s super PACs, Democracy PAC and Democracy PAC II, is expected to be spent on the 2026 midterms.

DEMOCRAT

This is the nonprofit arm of House Majority PAC, the flagship super PAC for House candidates. The group has aired about $34m worth of pro-Democratic policy ads in the midterms.

Largest recipients:

DEMOCRAT

One of the world’s richest people shot up this list with his last-minute donations, primarily to help Democrats running for the House.

Largest recipients:

Note: This figure includes donations from Bloomberg LP co-founder Thomas Secunda and his wife, Cindy. This figure does not include more than $7m donated this cycle by the Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund. Michael Bloomberg co-founded Everytown but is not on its board.

SPECIAL INTEREST

The crypto company and its co-founder shot out of a cannon in this year’s midterms, becoming one of the biggest financial players in crypto regulation, climate advocacy, AI regulation and California politics.

Largest recipients:

Note: This figure includes donations from Larsen’s wife, Lyna Lam.

REPUBLICAN

The widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson has comfortably kept pace with the giving of her late husband, using her fortune to support Trump and pro-Israel causes.

Largest recipients:

REPUBLICAN

This is the nonprofit arm of the Congressional Leadership Fund, the main super PAC for House Republican candidates. The group has aired about $53m worth of pro-Republican policy ads in the midterms.

Largest recipients:

SPECIAL INTEREST

The motivations of the crypto company and its founders are obvious: like Ripple, they want to push for a more pliant Congress when it comes to regulation of crypto.

Largest recipient:

Note: This figure includes donations from two Coinbase co-founders, Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam.

REPUBLICAN

A longtime Republican fundraiser, the hedge fund billionaire is staunchly pro-Israel and socially moderate.

Largest recipients:

REPUBLICAN

You may remember them from The Social Network, in which the towering twins squabbled with Mark Zuckerberg over the founding of Facebook. Now, they’re major crypto players who are trying to guide policy for the industry.

Largest recipient:

Note: This figure includes donations from Winklevoss Capital, the venture capital firm owned by the brothers.

REPUBLICAN

The OpenAI co-founder and his wife, who have a lot of money at stake in the artificial intelligence revolution, have said they are motivated solely by American competitiveness on AI.

Largest recipients:

REPUBLICAN

This is a relatively new conservative nonprofit group that has funded many of the super PACs that have meddled in Democratic congressional primaries.

Largest recipients:

REPUBLICAN

The company, along with its co-CEO Charles Koch, have long tried to push the country in a more libertarian direction. But they’re out of favour in Trump’s Republican Party.

Largest recipients:

Note: This figure does not include roughly $39m donated this cycle by Stand Together, the political and philanthropic network. Charles Koch co-founded the organisation but is not on its board.

DEMOCRAT

There is no Democrat who plays more of a leadership role in Silicon Valley fundraising than the LinkedIn co-founder.

Largest recipients:

Note: This figure includes donations from Hoffman’s wife, Michelle Yee.

DEMOCRAT

This new nonprofit group has emerged as a key part of the Democratic dark-money machine.

Largest recipients:

The Times divides the donor list into four categories. The first two are driven by their ties to the tech or crypto industries. The other categories are nonprofits or longtime partisan donors. Here’s a breakdown of the contributors and their motivations.

There is no donor whose spending rivals that of Elon Musk. He has contributed nearly three times as much as the next closest donor, rocketing to the top of the Times list. Musk’s total excludes tens of millions of dollars, including money given after October 14 or to entities that do not file through the US Federal Election Commission.

Over the past few months, Musk has spent more than $200m to help elect Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, to the Senate, including by standing up an extensive field campaign in the state. Other donations from Musk have gone to support political groups active in Kentucky and Alaska elections.

Musk is a leading example of the tech industry’s embrace of the Trump administration. Venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz makes this list as a leading donor to both Fairshake, a pro-crypto super PAC, and Leading the Future, the super PAC pushing for AI-friendly legislation.

OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna, are also the second main backers of Leading the Future, but the couple has since distanced themselves from the group.

A liberal counterweight to all of that, tech investor Reid Hoffman, is new to this list. About 40% of Hoffman’s donations, $16.5m, have gone to backing Paxton’s Democratic opponent, James Talarico, symbolic of a simmering feud between Hoffman and Musk in Silicon Valley.

The cryptocurrency industry has been one of the biggest spenders in the final weeks of the midterms. That’s primarily because the industry’s billionaires and companies were rattled in September by the defeat of a policy bill it favoured.

Alongside Andreessen Horowitz, Ripple and Coinbase are the other two anchor donors to Fairshake, which has now spent about $46m to try to prevent Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, from returning to the Senate. (Ripple’s executive chair, Chris Larsen, is also a major midterm donor, largely to support Democrats.)

Also spending against Brown are the Winklevoss brothers, who are tightly linked to Trump through their super PAC, the Digital Freedom Fund.

The biggest donors in political campaigns are increasingly nonprofits that don’t disclose their funding sources.

The super PACs behind Democrats in the House and Senate are funded heavily by House Majority Forward and Majority Forward respectively. The same goes for the principal two super PACs behind Capitol Hill Republicans, which are funded by their sibling nonprofit groups, One Nation and American Action Network.

All four of those nonprofits moved up spots on this ranking thanks to millions of dollars in new donations.

The American Prosperity Alliance continued its role as the main funder of a Republican super PAC that spent money in various Democratic primary elections in an attempt to produce weaker opponents for Republicans in the fall.

One entirely new group has joined the Times’ list since the summer: the Economic Opportunity Fund, which donated $35m in September and October alone to Democratic super PACs. The dark-money nonprofit, formed in 2024, says its work is to “support advocates, workers and policy experts dedicated to broadening economic opportunity for all Americans”.

It held less than $1m on hand as of mid-2025, according to its most recent tax return, suggesting that the nonprofit recently came into many millions.

These are the ol’ reliables of the US party system who cut big checks to the Democratic and Republican candidates year after year.

You’ll find familiar Republican names here: pro-Israel donors Miriam Adelson and Paul Singer backed GOP leadership super PACs this midterms, as they do cycle after cycle; more libertarian-minded donors like Jeff Yass and the Koch company are crucial to the Republican money machine, with the company investing heavily in the Republican field operation.

Richard and Liz Uihlein, a libertarian-leaning couple, have come on particularly strong at the end of the midterms, making last-minute hefty donations to prop up the GOP and lifting their total to about $150m.

Two New York Democratic donors are equally reliable. One is the Soros family. They are left-wing mainstays, but their two family-run super PACs still sat on about $173m as of mid-October. They did not appear in any rush to spend.

The other is Michael Bloomberg, a former Republican who is now the white knight for the Democratic Party, performing his trademark move of investing tens of millions of dollars at the end of the campaign. Most of Bloomberg’s donations in the midterms came in the final two months, shooting him up high on this list after not appearing at all on the last one.

About the data: The Times analysed US Federal Election Commission contributions from individuals and organisations from November 5, 2024 to October 14, 2026, the latest date for which contribution data is available. The Times grouped together partners in businesses that made large contributions, as well as spouses. The Times also grouped organisations with individuals if the person founded or co-founded the organisation and currently holds an active leadership role. The Times included children of donors if they were substantially involved with the donor’s fundraising operation. (For example, George Soros’ son, Alex, was included in the Times’ tally because he serves as a director of the Fund for Policy Reform, which has funnelled $50 million from the Soros family into the midterms.) The Times labelled donors as “Democrat” or “Republican” if they contributed at least $10m to political committees affiliated with those parties. The analysis only includes contributions that are reported through the FEC. It does not include contributions to state-level political efforts or other groups not registered with the FEC, such as so-called 527 organisations, which are instead registered with the Internal Revenue Service. The Times excluded loans, contributions that candidates made to themselves, contributions from PACs and the so-called 527 organisations and contributions that donors made to their own corporation PACs. The Times also excluded contributions that were made during this time period but were designated for a different election cycle. For in-kind contributions, the Times used the dollar value reported by the filer. For contributions made in cryptocurrency, the Times used the dollar value when the contribution was initially recorded and excluded any subsequent records of liquidation.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Matt Zdun and Theodore Schleifer

Photographs by: Doug Mills, Haiyun Jiang and Getty Images

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